I’ve been following fitness guru and health coach Massy Arias on Instagram for a while now. Arias, along with other women of color who train like Lita Lewis and Marissa of Body Concept in Chicago keep me motivated when I’d rather be somewhere eating all the carbs I can consume while catching up on 90 Day Fiancé.
Anywho, Arias has everyone talking right now because despite being 19 weeks pregnant, she still has a pretty mean six-pack. Of course, the 27-year-old Dominican beauty has been serious about fitness and her diet for years now (you have to be to call this a snack), so her muscles are well-defined at this point. As she shared in a recent post, Arias’s abs aren’t meant to make any other expecting (or non-expectant women) feel bad. She actually hopes that through posts of her workouts, diet and more, she can encourage women in general to be active:
More and more women are going into their second trimester with abs, and experts say that’s perfectly healthy and pretty normal during a first pregnancy, as rectus muscles separate when you deliver. “Some women don’t show, Alyssa Dweck, M.D. said in an interview with Shape last year about women with abs far into pregnancy. “The rectus muscles might be so well defined that they’re masking her growing uterus.”
At the same time though, as The Bump pointed out, you shouldn’t strive to get yourself some abs if you’re already expecting. However, you should just work out some, and do core exercises to prevent diastasis recti.
Fitpregnancy encourages moms-to-be to keep moving, with simple Pilates-based moves, curls and planks being their exercises of choice. Parents (and Andrea Orbeck) also has a few ab exercises they recommend pregnant women do a few times a week (2-3 times) that could aid in making the delivery process smoother. That includes heel slides, alternating heel drops, and double heel drops.
Check out a few more images of Arias, including how she works out during pregnancy, below. Don’t try this at home if you’re pregnant unless you’ve talked to a doctor and/or worked out at an intense level before baby. Again, the more work you do before pregnancy, the more it shows. As Arias told People last year, she has no background in athletics, but she knew she was determined to change her life by getting fit.
“I had no background in sports and I wasn’t athletic,” Arias said. “Today it’s a different story. I didn’t know that I was going to be able to do all the things that I’m doing now. I didn’t know that I had the potential to be this athletic. I think it’s just that the energy you put out, you get back.”
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